Stellar Book Review of Credit Risk Management - The Novel in The Asset Magazine

In the March 2015 edition of The Asset the Assistant Editor, Christoph Kober, reviews Credit Risk Management – The Novel (Part One).

Here is a short extract:

“In The Novel, Wells presents technical concepts in a manner that is enlightening to anyone interested in how oil majors and traders fuel the world economy. In the sometimes covert world of commodities, the book reveals how large oil majors can do business even with nefarious traders and national oil companies with erratic payment patterns.

Practical advice wrapped in lively accounts of how large commodity deals are brokered make the book a helpful guide not only to credit professionals but treasurers and financial directors as well.

But The Novel also has room for fiction. James “Jim” E Cricket, the head of the team of “creditphiles” at ShamOil, fancies more than just collateral when dealing with risky buyers. World peace is what he really strives for. Jim nearly brokers the smooth fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Apartheid in a matter of just a few months.

The Novel recounts some of the most dramatic geopolitical events at the end of the 20th century – which of course proved to be watershed moments for the commodities industries as well. Fast forward two decades and geopolitical hotspots throughout the world again keep businesses on their toes. Although set in the 1990s, the solutions presented by Wells were in fact developed more recently, he says, and their applicability today adds to the book’s relevance.

Wells aims to reach an entirely different group of readers with The Novel – students and graduates undecided where to work. “Younger people looking for a career in finance are drawn to investment banking because of the money it offers. I have always found that working in business is much more exciting because real stuff moves as a result of your actions as a credit specialist. There are very few finance programmes that give students exposure to credit risk management in their courses. I hope The Novel can add to this education and show that managing customer and supplier risk in a real business is an exciting career opportunity.”

Credit Risk Management – The Novel, Part One (2013) is published by T3P LIMITED and available for purchase at Amazon.
ISBN: 978-0-9576279-2-5, 104 pages

To read the whole Book Review click: www.t3plimited.com/TAMar2015TheNovelReviewCK.pdf

To subscribe to The Asset click: www.theasset.com

Bretton Woods - No. Globalisation - Yes

Greetings …

I had the pleasure of attending the FCIB Conference in Budapest a couple of weeks ago. The key-note speech by the Chief Economist of Fortis Bank was amusing, interesting and informative. This was a veritable highlight. Some comments that stuck include; the USA resembles the Roman Empire before it fell, with a near zero savings rate and a $9 trillion debt burden. You can hear the silent cry of US residents – so we have no money, never-mind let’s go to the mall and spend some more of someone else’s money! The prediction is that – if we are all very lucky – the lenders to the US citizenry will not ask for repayment until about 2012/13. So we only have to deal with the sub-prime fall out for now.

The other point well made, amid many a chuckle, was that (i) globalisation, and (ii) technology have changed the rules for the world economy, so the Bretton Woods US consumer dominated model and the associated control mechanisms no longer apply.

Participation in the world economy has grown ten fold since 1990 (800 million American-European-Japanese participants to 6000 million citizens) and technology has made the world ten times faster. Business has been turned on its head by technology and open access, from a heavy asset based fixed address model to an intelligence-connectivity model. Nation states have lost control since intelligence and connectivity has no fixed address.

The positive spin-off for all world citizens has been enormous. Sustained and stable economic growth, low inflation and low real interest rates; despite the world financial crises companies in the real economy are still in good shape.

Were you at the FCIB conference I Budapest? If so, what were your impressions? If not, do you agree with the sentiments that I have poorly represented above?

Regards Ron

PS: Find out more about the FCIB on www.fcibglobal.com